The present invention relates to golf balls, and particularly relates to a method and apparatus for grouping and stacking golf balls in an aesthetically pleasing manner to facilitate their selective removal therefrom.
In the field of golfing, it is often desirable to provide one or more stacks of golf balls in order to allow the golf balls to be selectively removed from the stack. For example, at golf driving ranges, it is often desired to provide a group of such golf balls at each booth, in order to allow a golfer practicing his or her swing to repeatedly pick a golf ball from the group of balls, place the ball on a tee, and hit it.
It is presently known to group such golf balls by the use of a wire or other suitable basket, with the balls simply being placed in a relatively unorganized manner within the basket, and either dumped or manually removed one-by-one therefrom.
It is also known to arrange such golf balls in groups by hand-stacking them into "pyramids", with a person manually stacking golf balls upon a suitable base and stacking additional golf balls level-by-level upon the previously-positioned level of golf balls. This method may include the use of a triangle-shaped base having holes pre-drilled therein to assist in the placement of the first level of golf balls. Although such a pyramid presentation provides an aesthetically-pleasing presentation of golf balls, it can become somewhat time-consuming to achieve due to its labor-intensive nature.
Therefore, it may be seen that there is a need in the art to provide a method and apparatus for quickly and easily stacking golf balls in an aesthetically pleasing manner, which allows for such stacking without excessive labor use.